Technical Field
The present invention relates to data storage and, more specifically, to providing shared data storage utilizing dispersed storage devices.
Description of the Related Art
For various reasons, it may be desirable to facilitate sharing of stored data among a plurality of servers in a computing environment. For example, data sharing is highly desirable in virtualized servers environments. In a virtualized server environment, server virtualization techniques are leveraged to improve the cost, agility, availability and scalability of a computing environment. Server virtualization enables multiple virtual machines, each executing its own operating system, to run on a single server. Data sharing across the servers in a virtualized environment leverages many of the benefits of server virtualization including migration of virtual machines across servers, dynamic load balancing, high availability and disaster recovery. However, conventional data sharing solutions such as solutions based on networked storage, Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA), and distributed file-system lack the scalability, performance, and cost desirable for virtualized or other shared storage computing environments.